The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes

“Right…okay.” Still clutching her towel across her chest, she stepped past him into the cottage and shut the door behind her. Then, instead of crossing immediately to her overnight bag or the bathroom, for a few minutes she just stayed there, leaning against the door and drawing long, deep breaths, and waiting for her legs to stop trembling.

She’d been in there a long time.

Sure taking her time about it, McCall thought, grumpy with the awareness that he-and she-were fast becoming a genuine honeymoon cliche. Woman taking forever in the bathroom…man pacing impatiently while his pulses pounded and his blood backed up in predictable places. It might have struck him as funny if he hadn’t been so damned uncomfortable, what with needing the bathroom himself, and way too much nicotine in his system and not nearly enough tequila. Not to mention the fact that his mosquito repellent was wearing off.

Five more minutes, he promised himself. Then he was going in.

He noted the time on his watch, then ambled the length of the veranda and back. Glanced in the window, not expecting to see much of anything with the curtains drawn…then did a double take and looked again.

The curtains were open only a crack, but the angle was just right, and Ellie was in just the right place. He could see her clearly. She was kneeling on the quarry-tile floor in front of her open overnight bag. She had her back to him and was dressed in an oversized T-shirt and baggy shorts, and the turned-up bottoms of her feet looked pink and wrinkled and childlike.

And there was nothing childlike at all about the gun she was holding in her hands.

He hadn’t meant to spy on her; for God’s sake, he wasn’t a Peeping Tom. But when he saw that gun, what the hell was he supposed to do? Shock had already exploded through him in gusty, whispered swearing he’d had enough presence of mind-after the first word, at least-to stifle. After that he just held his breath and shrank back as far as he could and still see through that crack in the curtains and prayed to God she didn’t turn around and see him there.

What’s this? What the hell is this?

For a few more minutes that was all he could think of, the only thing in his mind. And then he thought, Goody Two-Shoes, Tillie Tune-up, Mike Lanagan’s daughter and now…what? Mata Hari? Annie Oaklie? Who was this woman?

One thing for sure, she didn’t have that gun in her bag by accident. He watched her run through preparations for firing the thing-slap in the clip, check the chamber-click-click-set the safety-with professional efficiency. She knew what she was doing, all right. He didn’t know a whole lot about handguns, but this one looked efficient-slim, dark and deadly. He felt a cold and alarming clamminess creep over him as he saw her fasten it into an ankle holster, strap it in place, then pull on a pair of boots to cover both of those and check them for fit and comfort, and the gun for accessibility.

How much longer could he stand here and watch this? He could remember only one other time in his life when he’d made so shocking a discovery. He remembered how he’d felt then, too…cold like this, and a little sick. He remembered how disappointed he’d been, and angry and-hell, he wasn’t ashamed to admit it-scared. And just like then, wondering what in the world he was going to do about it.

Then, just when he thought he was either going to have to sit down and put his head between his knees or barge in and confront her, she did something that sent his thoughts careening wildly off in another direction entirely.

She’d taken off the boots, holster and gun and laid them carefully aside. Now she took something else from her bag, something he couldn’t immediately see. Then he heard the unmistakable r-r-rip of a Velcro fastening and a moment later her hot pink sun visor with the rainbow-colored Acapulco embroidered across the headband was placed to one side as well. Only…it looked different, somehow. It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing-to realize that the headband part of the sun visor had been opened along its top seam like a pea pod to reveal a hidden compartment lined with some sort of light-absorbing material.

And that was all the time he had to wonder about it before she picked up the sun visor and inserted something into the compartment, then held the visor up to the light while she painstakingly fitted it, whatever it was-camera? Recorder? Some kind of secret weapon?-into position, directly under the embroidered Acapulco. Then the newly “armed” visor went into the neat pile beside her along with the boots, holster and gun.

Next to come out of the bag was her watch, which she put on her wrist and then proceeded to fiddle with, but not in any way he’d ever seen, turning the watch this way and that while she stared at it-more like a compass than a timepiece. Apparently satisfied that it was working the way it should, she then, of all things, took off her earrings-the tiny gold studs he’d seen her wearing-and replaced them with a different, much larger pair.

Did that make sense? One minute the woman was calmly prepping lethal weapons and James Bond spy toys, and the next she was primping like a teenager going to a party. Who the hell is she? What the devil’s going on?

By this time, McCall was just about beside himself with impotent fury and unsatisfied curiosity. It was taking long-forgotten reserves of self-discipline-the kind he hadn’t thought he’d ever be called upon to use again-in order to maintain his silence, his distance and his calm. While his mind was busy jumping to impossible conclusions and shrieking questions at him for which he had no answers, he had to force himself to stand utterly still and watch with narrowed and burning eyes as she took a fat manila envelope from her bag and dumped its contents onto the tile. He wasn’t all that surprised to see money-lots of it, American bills, thick stacks of them, bundled with paper strips, the kind banks use. What did seem odd to him-though by this time he didn’t think anything could really shock him-was when Ellie carefully removed all the paper strips, then divided the pile of money into two roughly equal parts, one half of which she returned to the manila envelope. The other half she wrapped up tightly in a plastic bag and placed in the overnight bag, then covered it with the casual jumble of her clothes.

That done, she sat motionless for a moment with her hands in her lap, the rigidity of her spine and the slump of her shoulders betraying both tension and exhaustion. Her head was turned to one side as if she were deep in thought, going over a mental checklist one more time, perhaps. Though her profile was set in lines of grim resolve, she looked pale…vulnerable but determined. Watching her, McCall felt a sudden twisting sensation in his chest, a manifestation of emotions he’d hoped never to feel again and angrily squelched.

Since it was obvious she’d just about reached the end of her preparations, he moved quickly and silently away from the window. When she came onto the veranda a few minutes later he was standing on the pathway at the bottom of the steps, smoking a cigarette, depending on the nicotine to quiet his vibrating nerves and provide an excuse for the harshness he couldn’t keep from his voice when he spoke to her.

“So soon? I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind about taking the bed.”

“Sorry it took so long.” Her voice sounded breathless-with nerves, he wondered? Or guilt? “I was getting things ready for tomorrow-my clothes and things.” It was too dark to see if she’d blushed.

But then, he told himself, she wouldn’t, would she? Not if, as he suspected, she only blushed when she lied. After all, “clothes and things” covered a lot of territory.

Resentment simmered inside him, a slow burn underneath his breastbone. He thought of a dozen things he could have said to her, hinting of his knowledge, offering her openings to tell all. He couldn’t utter a one; all the words in his mind seemed to be stuck there, dammed up behind a bitter disappointment and sense of betrayal he didn’t understand at all.

Instead he took a final drag from his cigarette, threw it down onto the pea-gravel path and ground it viciously under his shoe, then started up the steps to where Ellie stood waiting for him, looking wholesome and innocent and lovely…and about as dangerous and deceitful as a handful of sunflowers.

And as he passed her, his heartbeat provided a timpani accompaniment to his soft, “Well, I’ll say good night, then…sleep well.”

As he knew he would not.

First light and the birds’ raucous wake-up calls came as a welcome relief to Ellie. For all its exotic and nostalgic allure and her eagerness to give it a try, the hammock had not served her well-through no fault of its own, she was sure. It had turned out to be every bit as comfortable as she’d thought it might be. The problem wasn’t her body; it was her thoughts that gave her no peace. And since in a hammock she couldn’t very well toss and turn, the only option she had was to stare wide-eyed into moonlit palm thatch and think about tomorrow.

No matter how hard she tried she didn’t seem to be able to talk herself out of self-doubts and forebodings-